[mythtv-users] Mythvideo - tvtomb

Craig Read craigread at csi.com
Fri Dec 10 02:05:57 UTC 2004


Stephen Tait wrote:

>
> At 12:00 09/12/2004, you wrote:
>
>> Ryszard wrote:
>>
>>> Is there a utility out there that will grab series info from tv tomb
>>> and stick it in the myth database?
>>>
>>> if not, is this a utility that many people would use?  I record a lot
>>> of series that i archive off host (but available to myth on a mounted
>>> FS) in a filename format something like the.west.wing.s06e07.hdtv.
>>>
>>> i think it would bepretty simple to write a paser to get this and grab
>>> some info from tvtomb on each EP.
>>>
>>> If such a util exists could someone point me to it? if it doesnt i
>>> will certainly write it for me anyways, but will publish it if people
>>> would use it.
>>
>> I'm guessing you're talking about tvtome.com and not tvtomb.com.  I 
>> have no idea if anything like this exists yet, but I'd certainly be 
>> interested in having a play with it if you create something.
>>
>> One thing that's a consideration though, is there is quite a bit of 
>> text info about each episode.  It might be too much to display all of 
>> it (at least for some episodes) on a TV screen through mythfrontend.  
>> But it "should" be fairly simple to link it into mythweb.  Take a 
>> look at 
>> http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-633/epid-24890/ 
>> and you'll see what I mean about the amount of text.
>>
>> Is there a wishlist around for the next version of MythTV?  Maybe a 
>> scrollable text area for episode info could be created.
>>
>> Craig...
>
>
> I'm definitely interested in a scraper for TVTome, and have even 
> contemplated learning PERL/taking the IMDB scraper to bits to figure 
> out how to do it - alas, have had very little spare time recently what 
> with moving house an' all.
>
> However, I don't really envisage it as something I'd use within MythTV 
> proper (if that's what you were getting at) - my xmltv feed (radio 
> times) already gives me adequate information about what's showing, and 
> hundreds of Myth users bombarding the TVT website every day would make 
> them wise up pretty sharpish.

Something that has been mentioned (and I'm going to take a look at doing 
it) is to create a tv listings server that people can hammer instead of 
the source servers.  It should be able to scrape from multiple sources 
(tv listings, imdb, tvtome, etc) and provide output in multiple formats 
(xmltv and TiVo slices).  I'd then expect people from the community to 
run mirror servers in their own region.

The reason for looking at this is the archaic rules surrounding TV 
listings here (down under) and the lack of reliability in the current 
system (I'm getting TV listings atm, but no descriptions of the shows).  
Also, it'd be nice to have a central point for comprehensive TV listings 
regardless of what system you're using to record and view.

Using one system to scrape the listings (instead of many) would also 
lend itself to a donation scheme for purchasing listings in places like 
Australia where the listings are copyrighted.

> I do however have about 400 episodes of various TV shows from my DVD 
> rips sitting in my mythvideo repository (another box set of Futurama 
> rendering away as we speak), and filling in the metadata by hand was 
> such a chore that I gave up.

Ouch...  That's exactly the sort of thing I want to avoid.

> As an aside, what do you reckon would be the best approach for the 
> "poster" window? I know that MythVideo expects the image to be at a 
> certain aspect ratio; should it just grab a generic $TV_SHOW_LOGO from 
> somewhere, or render a semi-random frame from within the file itself...? 

Sorry, I can't answer that one.

Craig...


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